Turnabout is Fair Play
by kjt1
Summary: Sara interviews a suspect that makes her question Grissom's part-confession to Dr Lurie. GS.


Title: Turnabout is Fair Play

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: CSI is not mine, grr.

Spoilers: Through S4, with definite references to 'After the Show' and 'Butterflied'

Notes: I've been contemplating what Sara's response to the events of Butterflied would be, if she ever got the opportunity to be in the position Grissom was; this is my attempt. I didn't use a beta for this, as I figured it was too short and I wrote it pretty quickly, so all mistakes are mine.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

---

"I wanna talk to the woman," demanded the female suspect in their murder case. Catherine raised her eyebrows and the woman amended, "the young one." Nick bit back a smirk as he saw Catherine's face harden and heard her puff out a sigh. "Can I talk to her?"

Without answering, Catherine rose from her chair and stalked out of the room, Nick following close on her heels. Brass instructed the uniformed officer to remain with the suspect and he joined the two CSIs out in the corridor.

"You finished already?" asked Grissom as he approached his three colleagues.

"Well, _we_ are," replied Brass, looking pointedly at Catherine.

"Is there a problem?" prompted Grissom after a moment of silence.

"The suspect wants to talk to Sara," Nick informed him. "Well, I assume that's who she meant when she said 'the young female one'." He was remembering the Walters case when the suspect had asked to talk to the 'pretty one' right in front of Sara and he smiled a little as he decided this was a little bit of payback against Catherine for that and the way she treated them when she became primary CSI on that case.

"Why does she want to talk to Sara?" queried Grissom. "Catherine is the lead on this."

"She's a suspect in the murder of an older guy that she works with, who she was probably dating, maybe she senses an affinity," said Brass quietly as he walked away. Neither Catherine or Nick heard his comment, but Grissom did and Brass could almost feel the daggers that were being aimed at his back.

---

"Sara, you don't have to do this," said Grissom as he explained the situation and waited for her response.

"She won't talk to anyone else though, right?"

"It appears that way," he admitted.

Sara nodded and stood up to leave his office. "Is anyone sitting in with me?"

"Only Brass."

She nodded again and left the room, but Grissom was only moments behind her, following her down the corridor. He stopped a few feet away as she spoke to Brass before they entered the interview room together and he then took his place on the other side of the one-way mirror, unseen by either Sara or Brass.

---

Grissom let out a sigh as he stared at Sara, watching her sit down opposite the suspect, Jane Bowman. Sara said nothing as she got herself settled, she didn't even look at Jane, preferring to ignore her instead. Eventually, she silently nodded to Brass that she was ready to start and he too sat down.

"Alright, Jane, you wanted to talk to me, so you'd better make it worth my while," said Sara somewhat aggressively, obviously surprising the other occupants of the room. Grissom watched and listened carefully, cataloguing every move Sara made and trying to work out her strategy. "Why did you want to talk to me?" she continued when the younger woman remained silent.

"I dunno," shrugged Jane.

"Not good enough," said Sara harshly. "I have work to do, I don't have time to waste with murder suspects who aren't going to co-operate, I'm better spending my time processing the evidence to prove you committed the murder." Jane's eyes shot up to meet Sara's and she flinched slightly. She opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. "You said you didn't want a lawyer, Jane, so talk."

"I didn't kill him," she started quietly, "it was an accident." Sara's eyebrows rose, but she didn't speak. The evidence they had processed so far was inconclusive and they really needed a confession. If Jane was going to go down the accidental or self-defense routes, they would need to triple-check every piece of evidence to ensure it would stand up in court. "We went for a walk out in Red Rock," continued Jane, "we often did that when we wanted to talk properly," she said a little wistfully.

"You'd had a fight?" guessed Brass, earning himself an annoyed glare from Sara, who wanted to handle all the conversation.

"Not a fight, it was… it was a disagreement."

"What was the disagreement about?" asked Sara.

"He… he thought I was cheating on him."

"Were you?"

"No!" said Jane. "I would never cheat on him, it was all in his head."

"There's no smoke without fire, what made him think you were cheating?"

Grissom's eyes flicked back and forth between Sara and Jane, watching each closely for their reactions, following their thought processes.

"He saw me talking to someone, a guy from work and then someone else told him that I was more than just friends with the guy."

"You and the vic –" Sara stopped herself from saying 'victim', and then said, "You and Mike worked together though, right?" Jane nodded. "Was it common knowledge at work that you and Mike were dating?"

"No, we kept it quiet because of our jobs."

"He was your boss?"

"Yes."

Sara took a deep breath as she processed all the information. She remembered when Grissom had assumed that she was dating Hank, before she actually _was_ dating him; that had hurt. If the victim had accused Jane of seeing someone else, of cheating on him, when it wasn't true, it would hurt deeply.

Deciding she needed to get the conversation back on track, Sara diverted with, "Tell me what happened out at Red Rock, Jane."

"We went for a walk and he fell," replied Jane sadly. Her body language was all over the place and Sara couldn't tell if she was lying or not, but she was beginning to think she should give her the benefit of the doubt, that she might not be guilty after all.

"Okay, let's start from the beginning," said Brass in a tone that Sara knew meant he was treading carefully. "You said you went to Red Rock because you'd had a disagreement about him thinking you were cheating on him, and you often went to Red Rock when you wanted to talk properly." Jane confirmed his statement with a nod and Brass glanced at Sara to check she was okay with him taking over the questioning for now. "Why Red Rock? If you wanted peace, why not talk in one of your homes?"

"If we were at home, one of us could leave," she explained. At the confused looks of Sara and Brass she elaborated, "If Mike came to my place, he could leave and go home if it was getting out of hand but, if we went to Red Rock, we only took one car and neither of us would leave the other out there on their own."

"Okay, that makes sense," said Brass. "Why were you walking at that height though, why not at ground level?"

"There are too many off-road vehicles going through there now, it's too busy and noisy. We always followed one of the trails up a little to get away from everyone."

Her answer made sense again and Sara and Brass shared a nod before he pressed, "Was he angry about the other guy?"

"He didn't believe me when I said the guy was just a friend."

"What's the guy's name?"

"I… Do I have to tell you? It was just an accident, I don't want to drag other people into it."

"Jane," said Sara quietly, "we need to check all this out. We need the name of the guy and the name of the person who told Mike that they thought you were more than just friends."

"The guy is Brett Tiler and it was Angie Moore who talked to Mike."

"Why do you think Angie told Mike that you and Brett were together?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "No-one knows about Mike and I, so it's not like she was trying to cause trouble between us."

"So, you and Mike were walking and talking," said Brass, resuming the previous line of questioning. "Mike was angry and didn't believe what you were saying, did that make you angry too?"

"He wasn't angry, he was just… disappointed. I tried to make him see that it wasn't true, but…"

"But he didn't believe you," finished Sara. "He didn't trust you. And that made you wonder if he really loved you. To have true love, you need to have complete and utter trust in the other person, accept them unconditionally, but he was questioning you, disbelieving you, that must have made you wonder if he really loved you."

Brass looked at Sara sharply as she spoke, knowing she wasn't expecting any answers from Jane; he wasn't sure she was even talking about Jane anymore. It reminded him of Grissom's confrontation with Lurie, the admissions he inadvertently made and he remembered that they were witnessed by Sara. He wondered if Grissom was watching this interrogation as Sara had been watching that one. Glancing at the one-way mirror quickly, he returned his gaze to Sara when she continued speaking.

"You must have been hurt by his lack of trust. Did it make you wonder if he _ever_ really loved you, or if he had just let his insecurities take over him once more? Did you wonder if you had perhaps contributed to that? There was nothing you could do though, you had to live your life the way you always had. If you changed, you might not be the person he was attracted to in the first place. You were glad he took the risk initially, but now you're wondering why he bothered if he wasn't going to open his heart enough to trust you, to even let you win his trust."

Behind the glass, Grissom was leaning heavily on the back of a chair, stunned by what he was witnessing. He too was remembering his conversation with Dr. Lurie and he was recognizing some of Sara's feelings, or rather her perception of how the victim, Mike, had been feeling; they reflected his own feelings.

"How did you and Mike hook up in the first place?" asked Brass, deciding he needed to stop Sara before she went any further.

"We had worked together for the last two years, we always got on pretty well," replied Jane very quietly. "There was always an attraction between us, but I knew he wanted to fight it, because of his job, his position."

"You both work for a computer company?" said Brass, waiting for her acknowledgement before continuing. "Is there a company policy against inter-office dating?"

"Not as such, but it's frowned upon."

"Okay, so he was fighting against it, but he gave in anyway and you got involved. How did that happen?" Brass looked at Sara as he asked the question, the similarities between Jane's situation and that of Sara amazing him.

"I asked him out about six months ago," replied Jane, causing Sara to let out a gasp as she realized the similarities ran even deeper than she had thought. "He said no." At this, Sara pushed her chair back a little from the table and started to stand up, but thought better of it and resumed her seat, though she didn't make eye contact with either Jane or Brass.

"He must have said yes eventually though," deduced Brass logically.

"He… He came by my apartment one night, after a work night out. He said he was at the stage where he couldn't fight his feelings any longer and he figured if he was going to be miserable without me, he might as well take the risk of being with me and being happy for a while, even if it could end in more misery."

Sara couldn't stand it any longer and she stood up and started pacing the room, trying to decide if she should excuse herself from the interview. Both Jane and Brass turned to look at her, though only Brass was aware of why she was acting in that way.

On the other side of the glass, Grissom was breathing heavily, finding the whole situation incomprehensible. It was like the Lurie situation all over again, but with the male and female positions reversed in more ways than one; the female was the murder suspect and it was a female CSI making a veiled confession.

"How long were you together?" asked Brass, catching Sara's eye as she walked behind Jane and giving her a look that told her he understood what was wrong.

"Three months."

"It fell apart so quickly?" said Sara in shock, dropping back down into her seat and staring at Jane, waiting for an answer.

"Yes, he… he just stopped trusting me. I think you were right earlier, I don't know if he ever _did_ trust me." Jane was paraphrasing, but Sara knew exactly what she meant and she nodded her head slowly in understanding. "I swear I didn't kill him though," said Jane tearfully. "He just fell. I… I tried to stop him."

Before either Brass or Sara could say more, there was a knock on the door and Nick entered with a file in his hands, indicating to them that he wanted to talk to them outside.

"Robbins report," said Nick as they gathered outside the interview room, waving the file at them. Sara grabbed it from his hands and started to read while Brass looked to Nick for explanation. Grissom came up beside them and started reading over Sara's shoulder, instantly regretting being so close to her. She twisted her head slightly to look at him and then took a few steps away, closing the file and looking at Nick.

"It's inconclusive," said Nick, prompting a frustrated sigh from Sara. "Did the suspect say they fought, or had any kind of physical contact?"

"She said he fell, but that she tried to stop him," answered Brass.

"Well, that may be true," said Nick. "There are some scratches on his arm –"

"Yeah, I saw them earlier," interrupted Sara. "Robbins didn't think they looked very deep though, so they might have been caused by bushes along the trail. He was going to do some scrapings for me."

"He changed his mind. The scratches were definitely caused by fingernails and the angle of them is pretty interesting." They all gave Nick their full attention. "He fell backwards and some of the scratches appear to have been made while he was at an angle, probably as he started to fall."

"From when she tried to stop him?" asked Brass.

"Yeah, probably. I'm still waiting on Greg's results on her DNA, but I would bet that she was responsible for the scratches. The really interesting part though," continued Nick, "is that some of the scratches were made while he was still vertical."

"Are those the deepest ones?" queried Sara. Nick nodded. "She could still have pushed him then." They all looked at her inquisitively. "They could have been talking, she put her hands on his arms to make him stand still and listen to her," she explained, automatically turning to the nearest male to show them what she meant, who just happened to be Grissom. "If he tried to move away, she'd probably be gripping pretty hard and the scratches would happen. If he said something to piss her off, she could push him away." She released her hold on Grissom and pushed him away to demonstrate. "If they were near the edge, he could have fallen backwards and she then reached out to try to grab him, causing the other scratches."

They all agreed that her theory was a possibility, but Brass then said, "That would mean it _was_ an accident."

"If she pushed him though…" said Sara.

"But, what if it wasn't intentional to push him off the cliff?" argued Nick. "You need to talk to her again."

---

Sara cautiously laid out her theory to Jane, but did it bit by bit so that the whole thing wasn't clear. She confirmed that she had gripped him hard to stop him walking away from her, but she denied that they were near the cliff edge at that point, they didn't walk to there until later.

"Dammit, there's no way to prove this one way or the other," said Sara in frustration as she and Brass left the room again to confer. "Did she push him, or did he fall?"

Grissom's voice surprised them as he said, "There's another possibility." They turned around and looked at him with raised eyebrows. "From everything she said in there just now, coupled with what she said earlier and how she was acting –"

"You were watching?" asked Sara suddenly, a look of panic crossing her features for a brief moment before she managed to regain control.

"Yes," confirmed Grissom. Sara started to say more, but she couldn't find the courage and she silently prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her as she remembered everything she had said in the room. "As I was saying, from what I've heard, there could be another possibility."

"Like what?" queried Brass.

"Suicide."

"What?!" exclaimed both Brass and Sara, utterly puzzled.

"Think about it. He entered into a relationship that he had fought against for so long. He put everything on the line for her, took a huge risk and then suddenly, after a relatively short time, he thinks she's cheating on him. She was probably everything he had ever wanted, she had to be for him to risk so much – he was extremely well respected in his field. If their relationship was over, what was there left for him?"

Sara was staring at him as he spoke and he finally met her gaze as he said the last sentence. She saw a look of hopelessness pass through his eyes, before he schooled his look back to indifference.

"He fell backwards though," pointed out Brass, disturbed by the scene that was playing out before him between Grissom and Sara. "Jumpers don't normally go backwards."

"He probably wanted it to look like an accident," said Grissom.

"Why?"

"To protect her."

"Well, _that's_ worked well," scoffed Sara, "she's our main suspect."

"Yes, but the evidence is inconclusive. He was a highly intelligent man, with the ability to think quickly on his feet."

"I still don't buy it. Why do it _then_, in front of her?" said Sara. "If he wanted to protect her, why kill himself with her watching?"

"Because he didn't want to carry on any longer and, in a way, he wanted to hurt her for the pain she had caused him by cheating."

"I still don't buy it."

"He may also have needed a witness."

"Why?"

"Has anyone checked if he has any insurance policies?"

Sara's eyes grew wide as she realized the implications of what Grissom was saying. "I'll get on it right away."

"It's okay, I'll get my guys onto it," said Brass, walking away from them both. "I'll let you know as soon as I get anything."

Sara and Grissom stood around uncomfortably for a few moments before Sara finally said, "Thanks. I didn't even consider that."

"You should always consider every possibility, Sara, you know that," he said somewhat sternly, but the look in his eyes was tender. "People often have different reasons for doing things than others would think."

The double-meaning in his statement did not go unnoticed by Sara and she dipped her head as she tried to formulate a response. When she looked back up, Grissom was walking away from her and she let out a sigh in a mixture of relief and frustration.

---

It was soon discovered that the victim had two life insurance policies, one of which was taken out two months previously in favor of Jane Bowman. Although suicide was a plausible explanation, it could not be proven and neither could murder, so Jane would receive the insurance money and they would never know what really happened out at Red Rock Canyon.

Sara and Grissom stood side-by-side as they watched Jane walk out of the building, each playing the events of the day through their minds.

"Why were you watching?" asked Sara suddenly. Grissom turned to face her, but didn't reply. "You don't usually feel the need to watch any interrogations I do, what was different about this one?"

"I don't know," he replied honestly, not giving anything away as he then retreated to his office.

---

"Inconclusive, huh?" said Brass as he entered Grissom's office. "I hate cases like that; so near, yet so far." Grissom nodded and scrubbed a hand over his face wearily. "So, you were watching the interviews with Jane Bowman, huh?"

"Yes."

"Hear anything interesting?" Grissom's furrowed his brows in confusion. "It reminded me a lot of your interview with that Dr Lurie," hinted Brass, smiling a little as he saw fear flit over Grissom's face for just a moment. "It's strange that you were watching today."

"Why?"

"Sara watched you with Lurie and you watched her today, in an eerily similar interrogation." A full smile formed as he saw shock register on Grissom' face. "They do say that turnabout is fair play, don't they?" he grinned, starting to step away. Grissom didn't say anything and Brass shook his head as he added, "The two of you are so similar it's scary. On the other hand though, maybe you'd rein each other in, make it more tolerable for the rest of us. You should think about that, Gil."

Grissom watched Brass leave and then sat back in his chair, contemplating everything he had just heard. Now that he knew Sara had been watching when he talked to Lurie, all she had said to Jane Bowman made sense; it was as if she was answering everything he had worried about, even though she didn't know he was watching. He had worried that she would leave him and she was telling him that if he couldn't take the chance, he didn't trust her, which meant he didn't love her. The question now was, did he trust her and, more importantly, did he love her? The Red Rock victim had obviously thought Jane Bowman was worth the risk and look how that turned out. But, he had happiness for a while, was that worth it?

Glancing at the clock, Grissom realized it was nearly the end of shift and his stomach rumblings reminded him that he hadn't eaten for hours. With renewed vigor, he left his office and walked to the break room. Finding Sara there alone, he asked, "You hungry?"

---

The End


End file.
